26 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
piled up above the plain is added, the difficulty 
becomes extreme. 
On walking round the entrenchment at the bottom 
of the fosse, and keeping an eye upon the herbage— 
the best of all guides—one spot may be noticed where 
there grows a little of that ‘rowetty’ grass seen in 
the damp furrows of the meadows. But there is no 
sign whatever of a basin or excavation to catch and 
contain this slight moisture—slight indeed, for the 
earth is as hard and impenetrable here as elsewhere, 
and this faint moisture is evidently caused by the 
rainfall draining down the slope of the rampart. 
Looking next outside the works for the source of such 
a supply, a spring will be found in a deep coombe, or 
bottom, about 800 yards—say, half a mile—from the 
nearest part of the fosse, reckoning in a straight line. 
Then, in bringing up water from this spring, which 
may be supposed to have. been done in skins, a double 
ascent had to be made: first up on to the level 
plateau, here very narrow, next up the steep down 
itself. Those only who have had experience of the 
immense labour of watering cattle on the hills can 
estimate the work this must have been. An idea is 
obtained of the value of an elevated position in early 
warfare, when men for the sake of its advantage were 
found willing to submit to such toil. 
That, however, is not all—foraging parties fetching 
water must have been liable to be cut off from the 
main body ; there were no cannon then to cover a 
